Book Censorship News, June 19, 2026

As the American Library Association (ALA) reported in its April 2026 State of Libraries Report, the movement to censor materials in American schools and public libraries has shifted. The number of titles targeted in 2025 that were reported to ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has grown (nearly 2,000 more titles than 2024), but the vast majority of challenges are no longer coming from “concerned” parents. Nearly all of the censorship attempts recorded by ALA in 2025—92%—were initiated by pressure groups and government decision makers.

In response to the overwhelming attacks on individual book titles over the past five years, libraries and library supporters have understandably invested in building out policy guidance and training while introducing laws and regulations in defense of library collections. Libraries have experienced a collective wakeup call about the importance of protecting our users’ rights to access with ironclad policies; and with the publication of ALA’s revised Intellectual Freedom Manual (11th edition), there is an updated playbook to follow. But, policies dictating the terms of issuing, renewing, and use of library cards are also essential for guarding the right to receive information, as well as terms for protecting privacy and confidentiality of library use. 

Libraries that have not proactively revised their library card registration policies to ensure minors and other disenfranchised patrons have low barrier access might want to take a second look. In practice, defining the terms of library use for minors continues to be a thorny political and policy issue, with the obligation of parents and guardians to guide their own child’s reading through conversation and shared experience–long thought to be common sense–being challenged and litigated. 

Meanwhile, libraries are increasingly being pressured or forced by external partisan interest groups to regulate how all children (and teens) use the library through inflexible legislation and other rulemaking mandating parental permission for card registration, restricting what minors are permitted to access or check out, requiring that libraries grant caretakers the right to view a minor’s library account, or granting parents the authority to delete a minor’s record altogether. 

Diligent and regular review of registration and other related policies with our Core Values and ethics in mind–namely those of access, intellectual freedom, and privacy–is a crucial step for libraries to protect intellectual freedom. In the best case scenario, a library has issued recently updated and clear guidance for its public, staff, and stakeholders around how library records for minors are created and protected, balancing the responsibility of parents to guide their child’s use of the library with the minor’s ultimate right to access and privacy.

Library Cards for Some! (But Not All) 

Limited access to free, available, and diverse reading material for American kids and teens should worry those already concerned about a generational collapse in literacy (other recent essays on creating conditions for reading in libraries and schools here and here). The reality is that across the country, the ability to get a library card, the most critical component of public library access, can be an overwhelming challenge, or simply not realistic or possible, depending on factors like where you live, your age, ability, or residential circumstance. 

Barriers to library access broadly present themselves from standard requirements to show government-issued ID to stipulations that patrons must physically sign up for a library card in person. The latter is a struggle for those with mobility issues, who can’t be available during library business hours or who simply don’t have a reliable way to get there; it’s also a missed opportunity for those who might benefit from a library’s digital offerings. Showing proof of residency, a standard and logical library card requirement, is more complicated for those in temporary, seasonal, mobile, or displaced living situations. If the library card application requires an email address or phone number, and you don’t have one, what do you do? Other barriers present themselves when the registration process, as well as information about using the library, is only available in English. 

These barriers to library access further compound for minors. Crucially, many public libraries require a parent or legal guardian signature to issue a library card to a minor, with no exceptions or workarounds, even up to the age of 18. Other libraries may set a minimum age or demonstrated ability (like printing your first and last name) to be eligible for a library card, limit the number of permitted checkouts on youth cards as compared to adults, and/or restrict access by age to certain sections of the library. A common practice in public libraries yet is the requirement that parents present the child in question upon signup, fearing that patrons will “invent” children to get multiple library cards and dodge the responsibility to pay old fines and fees. 

Threading the Needle: Parental Guidance vs. the Rights of Minors 

These registration requirements have a logical intent. A very young child will already be accompanied by an adult to the library. Older children likely still need a grownup to provide an address and contact information for the account. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) laws restrict for-profit entities from collecting a minor’s personal information without parent consent (up to age 13), and libraries are wise to err on the side of compliance as much as possible. Most importantly, libraries looking to protect their most expensive asset–the collection–may want (or require) an adult to acknowledge the responsibility to pay for lost or damaged materials.

Over time, reasonable expectations of a parent’s involvement in their child’s library usage have been conflated with the parent giving “permission” to access the library and, by extension, having rights to ownership over the minor’s account, even for older kids and teens. Parents and guardians should be involved in their child’s exposure to the world and journey as a reader. Yet minors, including those without an available parent to grant permission, have a right to access the library; and they likewise have a right to privacy. 

Public libraries who don’t have clear terms around youth signup also likely don’t have operational clarity around the ongoing use and management of the minor’s record. Libraries that are compelled (or willing) to step in and help parents regulate their own child’s library use realize that things can get complicated quickly. Examples include, but are not limited to:   

• What is the explicit purpose of the parent signature on the library card application? Do both the library and the parent understand this purpose? 
• How does the library verify whether an adult is the true parent or legal guardian of the minor in question? 
• Until what age is the parent or legal guardian signoff required, and why that age? What official workarounds or exceptions are in place to grant access without a parent signature?
• Once established, who has ultimate authority over the record – the parent or the minor? Under what terms should staff update account information like the barcode and PIN, contact information, opting in or out to a saved reading history, change terms of access, and the deactivation of the account?
• For youth cards with restricted access to “age-appropriate” sections of the library, how will the library ensure that terms of access are controlled across all collections and services, including online databases, digital magazines, and internet use? Likewise, are unaccompanied youth allowed to browse the library? 
• What are the terms of privacy? Does the listed parent/legal guardian on the account have full rights to view reading history? Until what age for this minor do these terms apply, and why? 
• At what age are a minor’s overdue fines and/or fees forgiven? Does the parent’s failure to return or pay for library materials on a youth account follow that patron into adulthood? 
• How should the library handle situations where a child divides their time between households?

Things become simpler when a public library resists any pressure to serve in loco parentis or insert themselves as the intermediary between a parent, their wishes for the child, and the child cardholder. Without careful thought and consideration around the terms of parent/guardian involvement with a minor’s account, libraries put themselves at risk. Not only are age-specific restrictions on library use a potential liability for libraries, they are a violation of ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, which strongly opposes efforts to deny a person’s right to use the library, or betray privacy of that use, based on their age.

Who Regulates the Library?

Without rigorous and ethical library registration, account management, and privacy policies on the books, censors don’t have to work too hard to leverage library cards as a tool to restrict youth access to libraries. Examples of government-sanctioned regulation of minor library use include mandating written parental consent for all minor library accounts (up to the age of 18), with reauthorization required annually (Mohave AZ proposed, item 53); authorizing the release of a minor’s library records of minors to the parent or guardian upon request (Iowa proposed); and city-council mandated requirements that the local library provide a mechanism for parents to regulate their child’s card use with new “restricted” card types (Irving, Texas). 

As regulations and laws around minors’ use of the library are implemented, libraries are then left to muddle through the practical impacts to their operations. As was the intent, the harm to families who wish to use the library on their own terms, and to the reading freedoms of kids and teens, immediately become apparent. For example:   

• In 2023, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft introduced 15 CSR 30-200.015, or the Library Certification Requirement for the Protection of Minors, in part stating that “no person employed by or acting on behalf of the library shall knowingly grant access to a minor to any material in any form not approved by that minor’s parent or guardian.” To be in compliance, libraries in the state have chosen to expire the library cards of all minors, requiring a parent signature in all cases for reactivation. Kansas City Library now permits parents to “deactivate” their child’s library card, their right until that minor turns 18. 
• Idaho’s HB 710, passed in 2024, “prohibits certain materials from being promoted, given, or made available to a minor by a school or public library,” leading libraries in the state to default all minor library cards to restricted use, require a parent/guardian to be present in person during child library card signup, and to set up “adults only” rooms restricted for anyone under the age of 18, unless accompanied by an adult. 
• In New Hampshire, HB 273, in effect as of January 1 2026, allows parents or legal guardians to request access to their minor children’s library records (up to the age of 18). To avoid liability, libraries must implement strict requirements about how to verify the legal authority of the named adult on a child’s record before issuing a library card.

It’s also worth noting that in a state like Ohio, where library privacy laws have excluded minors since 2004, the groundwork is already laid for legislators to propose restrictions to minors’ access to materials the state deems “harmful” or “inappropriate” without their parent’s consent. With laws like this working in tandem, it’s a slippery slope to government-sanctioned surveillance. 

Countering attempts by lawmakers to regulate what children and teens might choose to read, several states have passed legislation to prevent books from being pulled from the shelves in taxpayer-funded institutions. These “Freedom to Read” laws protect library collections and the staff who curate them by tying the release of public dollars to concrete and defensible collection development and reconsideration policies.

• The Illinois Freedom to Read Act, the first of its kind, passed in 2023. The bill asserts that reading material in libraries may not be “proscribed, removed, or restricted because of partisan or personal disapproval.” 
• California’s Freedom to Read Act, effective January 2025, requires all public library jurisdictions to establish an inclusive collection development policy, prevents removal of library materials solely based on their content, and protects librarians and staff from retaliation for upholding the law.
• In Delaware, the Freedom to Read Act, signed into law in September 2025, additionally mandates that library materials remain on the shelf and accessible during any review process, seating a new School Library Review Committee, including the state librarian and secretary of education, to handle community appeals on the right of library materials to remain on the shelf.  

The states passing “Freedom to Read” laws to protect library collections–and the readers who may want or need them–may not have the same awareness of the need to protect library card access. Libraries generally must meet a set of minimum service standards within their state in order to receive public dollars, reported annually, but policies and rules to get a library card are vastly set at the local level. Without much regulation ensuring that those in a library’s service area are guaranteed a path to access, the result is a patchwork of inequitable or complete lack of access. And pressure groups and other legislators looking to leverage library cards as a censorship tool are able to take advantage of a system that isn’t all that systematic to begin with. 

Researching Library Access Nationwide

When Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) launched Books Unbanned in April 2022, the thousands of stories we received from teens asking for a BPL library card painted a somber picture about the state of library access across the country. While the personal stories about censorship were difficult to hear, many more teens were actually sharing stories about the lack of substantial access to any reading material at all. 

• “Access to books online will be extremely helpful as I struggle with pretty severe anxiety and leaving the house to check out books can be pretty stressful for me.” 
• “I live in a rural community and the only library we have in our area is my school. The library is closed during summer, so I was hoping to use your services then.”
• “I live five minutes away from a public library, but it’s across the county line so they would have charged me $20 for a six-month library card.”
• “I can’t pay off the fines of my local library card from back when I was a kid, and I’d really love being able to read these.”

The Books Unbanned testimonials that BPL has collected for the past four years highlight a pattern of compounding barriers for teens and young adults to access both free and desirable books, ranging from lack of school library access, limited library collections, and difficulty accessing the public library, from not having a ride … to just not being able to get a library card. 

As a founding member of the Books Unbanned team, these stories inspired me to partner with the Mellon Foundation in 2023 to launch a national research study focused on documenting the existing American standards for library card registration. I intended for the project to fill a gap in professional guidance by collecting and disseminating an analysis on how libraries across the U.S. issue library cards, then developing policy guidance for library administrators to consider when rethinking cardholder signup. Those who are serious about efforts to protect and expand access to libraries–and counter those who hope to do the opposite–should take note of these resources. Libraries looking to build and protect inclusive, diverse, and representative collections should make sure their registration policies are fit to match. 

Library Card Policies Across the United States

After collecting data from more than 2,000 public libraries (more than 20% of all libraries nationwide), including from every U.S. state and D.C., BPL published the results of its research in early 2024. This is the first known national dataset available for libraries in this area of practice. While our analysis was meant to be purely informational, rather than prescriptive, the findings helped to illuminate how standard library policy and practice can create unwelcoming or insurmountable barriers for those in the margins to get a library card. For example, among surveyed libraries: 

• More than two in five (43%) require patrons to apply in person for a full-access library card. 
• The majority offer their cardholder application (62%) and introductory information or materials (72%) only in English.
• Three in five require adults to show government-issued photo identification (ID) in order to receive a full-access library card.
• More than nine in ten (93%) require a primary mailing address in all cases.
• 66% of libraries require a phone number in all cases.
• 27% require an email address in all cases.
• Nearly one in five (19%) do not offer an option to optionally collect a preferred patron name (different from name on legal ID).
• 11% include gender as a required field in the patron account record.
• 14% have a minimum age requirement of 5 years old to get a library card. 9% have a minimum age requirement between 10 and 18 years old to get a library card.
• Most require youth up to a certain age to have stated permission from an adult in order to receive a library card. Among these libraries, more than half require adult permission until the minor is 18 years old.
• 16% of libraries issue youth cards with some form of limitation on access, either by limiting the types of items that youth card is able to check out, or limiting the number of items that can be checked out as compared to adult cards.

This means that who you are and where you live matter a lot in terms of whether you have access to your local public library. For example, those living in month-to-month apartments, sharing a room, seasonal workers, or college students. A teenager without an ID or a way to verify their mailing address. Those without a parent or guardian to sign for their application. Those who don’t have, or can’t get, a government-issued ID. Those who can’t easily get to the library, or for whom audiobooks are literally the only way they can read at all. Those who can’t pay off old library fines. Those who believe that getting a library card costs money, or that the library will share their personal information or reading history. Those who need (and deserve) to read privately. 

Some may be able to find workarounds to these challenges; for others, they’re a barrier to access. People who have already been marginalized should be made to feel that the library actually wants them there. A patron’s first encounter with a library, especially as a young person, is often that of getting a library card. An unwelcoming or difficult experience can have a lasting impact. Vague, out-of-date, and exclusionary registration policies only serve those wishing to limit access and keep readers out. 

For all the hangwringing around kids and teens looking at the “bad” books, or the tendency to judge someone’s trustworthiness based on their living circumstance, the life changing experience of having a library card as well as the liberty and privacy to read freely is undeniable. The Books Unbanned “Youth Voices” report is also filled with stories from those now able to read. Here’s a testimonial from a Books Unbanned cardholder renewing their BPL library card: 

This library card genuinely means so much to me. I do not have a local library, and the price of books is getting so expensive. This library card allows me to read as much as I want. Last year I read 55 books, and over half of them were from the library. Thank you so much for this program, it really means so much to me.

Unlocking and Protecting Library Access

It’s worth recognizing the many libraries which have been working to revisit their rules for creating and managing library accounts to reduce barriers, protect privacy, and create an overall welcoming experience. Others may not have realized that it’s way past time to interrogate these “rules” and the impacts to access tied to those rules. 

Brooklyn Public Library’s policy brief on Library Card Access, issued in July 2025, will walk you through flexible guidance and recommendations for restructuring access to reduce barriers. If library leaders want to know exactly how their policies have been restricting access for youth and other patrons on the margins: listen to your staff. It’s likely that they are either regularly denying library cards, or quietly and heroically breaking the rules to ensure eligible patrons are granted access.  

We should absolutely be concerned about the coordinated, well-funded efforts to defund libraries, criminalize educators and library workers, and remove books from the shelves. Those of us fortunate to live in book-rich environments may not have considered that there are many others who cannot even access books, with minors arguably facing the steepest challenges of all. This means that the ability of a young person living in rural Illinois to access a library can look significantly different from that of their peers in urban Seattle. This also means that, for kids and teens without many other options to access books, banning titles from school libraries and classrooms is devastatingly effective.

Libraries should also know that in this political climate, book banners are looking for any and every way to control the freedom to read. Library cards grant access to knowledge and services worth protecting. Many libraries are already grappling with unwanted, unpractical, and unconstitutional regulations on who gets to use the public library, under what conditions, and strips away all privacy protections for minors. This is the new landscape of censorship, even before the reader can get their hands on a single book.

Amy Mikel is the Senior Director of Customer Experience at Brooklyn Public Library, leading BPL’s circulating print, media, eBook, and database collection strategy as well as the policies which govern patron account management and materials circulation. Amy was recently honored with the American Library Association’s Medal of Excellence for her work researching and advocating for library card access, and was part of the team named Library Journal’s “Librarians of the Year” in 2023 for creating the Books Unbanned Freedom to Read campaign.

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The third and final part of this series will release next week. It will bring together the discussions of children’s privacy and library card registration in a way that Amy and I hope will be helpful for libraries and library users to consider.

Book Censorship News: June 19, 2026

• A federal court heard arguments in the appeal of a 2023 law in Arkansas that would criminalize librarians for providing materials to their community. The state doesn’t believe this is a First Amendment nor Due Process problem. What ARE rights, anyway? Whatever the far right decides benefits them.
• Speaking of Arkansas, residents don’t want them to go full Alabama and require libraries ban books that conservatives don’t like in order to get funding. The state ACLU is poised for a lawsuit if the policy is implemented.
• In Duval County, Florida, a 16-year-old high schooler has created a short documentary about the effects of the district’s book banning on students.
• “Elizabethtown Area School District [PA] is considering a policy shift that would remove books containing what school board directors deem to be “explicit sexual content” from the district’s libraries.” This would be another step in this far-right board’s obsession with books in the school libraries and classrooms. Recall that this district has seen student protests and has been subject to a documentary about its extremist board.
• Tennessee lawmakers still mostly believe their “Age Appropriate Materials” act is fine, even if it pulls books like Roots from high schools. Those who are making some reconsiderations are doing so despite explicitly being told these would be issues when the bill first came up. Almost as if experts knew what would happen and partisan sycophants didn’t want to listen.
• Eight books were removed from Celine Independent School District (TX) because of Senate Bill 13. Among the titles? Those by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.
• The use of the description “left of center” here is hilarious–not banning books is bipartisan–but again, champions of access showed up for a read in to demand that New Hampshire’s governor NOT sign the proposed book banning legislation. Recall that the governor did not sign it last year.
• I love sharing examples of nice letters to the editor about the library and/or impact of book censorship. Here’s a good example.
• I’m echoing Jared’s comment here that I have seen this reported nowhere, but Education Secretary Linda McMahon met with the leader of That One Twitter Account That Attacks Any Teachers or Librarians Who Dare Consider Queer People Are People to air their grievances about “gender ideology” in schools. Consider this a further step in the push to ram through federal legislation like HB 7661 and HB 2616.
• There was an attempt to ban The Bluest Eye in Arroyo Grande and Nipomo (CA) high schools. The attempt failed and the books remain. One of the banners called the novel “trash” and the author “a sick individual.” Sigh.
• “Director Holly Tripp said she appreciated the book and that it is a “valid experience for people to know about,” but voted with the rest of the board to restrict the book because of its listed resources that promote a narrative that is “harmful for most.”” This is D-20 in Colorado–recall this is a state with an anti-book ban law–and they removed Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher. Why? It centers a transgender story. The board is relying on the fact that HR 2616 passed in the House at the federal level for their decisions, despite the fact it hasn’t been heard in the Senate nor signed into law.
• The current state of the Massachusetts anti-book ban bill, as two different versions have been passed in the two Congressional houses.
• The Pittsburgh Equality Center (PA) has launched a network of Little Queer Libraries. If you’re in Pittsburgh, see if you can track one down (& help young readers find those books, too).
• Putnam County (TN) libraries have two vacant board positions, and there is a campaign of misinformation about the candidates. This story is important for that but also for how it outlines the lengthy battle this library has had with people claiming that librarians are groomers and that they’re providing inappropriate material in the collection.
• Timberland Regional Library Board of Trustees President Brian Mittge (WA) let slip his intentions to dismantle the library system, including making sure it will “be beige, not rainbow.” This is the opposite of what a library is, but it sure is the dream of white supremacy.
• Speaking of the above, a member of the local republican group fully supports Mittge’s vision, even though he doesn’t support banning books. Sure, Jan.
• Why was one of the biggest book banning advocates in the state of Utah allowed to volunteer to catalog in a Davis School District library? That’s not a volunteer job.
• The courts have now said Trump cannot edit National Parks signage, nor demand books–and real history–be banned from their shops.
• Hollidaysburg Area School District (PA) has been sued over a policy that blatantly discriminates against LGBTQ+ people and celebrations of queer people. One of the allegations in the case is that a slate of books were attempted to be removed (or were successfully removed) from classrooms.
• Trustees on the Nampa School District board (ID) have banned three books from the curriculum, including Maus.
• Here’s an episode of WBEZ’s “In The Loop” featuring an array of Illinois library and literary advocates talking about the landscape of censorship as it is now.
• Democracy is behind a paywall here. Columbia County (GA) Libraries denied an appeal of a reconsideration request this week; this library has been dealing with a spate of book challenges, relocating several from the teen section to the adult section. Per the board agenda, the book in question was Fallout by Ellen Hopkins; it appears to be located in the YA section of the library, so unclear what the reconsideration was. We’ll know when the board puts their minutes up, maybe.